Previous occupants of the Chair in Dutch History have produced path-breaking, fundamental work on a wide range of topics in Low Countries History, including the Dutch Revolt, Anglo-Dutch relations, political theory, Dutch commerce, Dutch-Jewish history, and the early Enlightenment.
Today, research into the History of the Low Countries – including the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg – is pursued at UCL by:
- Benjamin Kaplan
Professor of Dutch History, who has published widely on the religious history of the Low Countries and of early modern Europe generally in the 16th-18th centuries. He works especially on issues of religious conflict and toleration, and has recently been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship a project: project 'Cunegonde's Kidnapping: Religious Encounters in an Early Modern Borderland. He has also been awarded a Fellowship by the Guggenheim Foundation.
- Charles Ford
a Senior Lecturer in history of art, who specialises in 17th century Dutch painting.
- Ulrich Tiedau
a Lecturer in modern Low Countries history and society, who specialises in the history of Belgium in the early twentieth century, and cultural relations between Germany and the Low Countries in the modern era.
- two PhD students at the history department:
Guido van Meersbergen is writing a dissertation comparing the ethnographic discourses of the Dutch and English East India Companies regarding the peoples and states of the Indian subcontinent.
Jaap Geraerts is writing a dissertation on the Catholic nobility of Utrecht and their contribution to the survival of Catholicism in the Dutch Republic.
- and two PhD students at the Dutch department:
Nicholas Piercey who is researching football culture in the early 20th century Netherlands, and
- Gail Zuckerwise who is investigating the cultural representations of Amsterdam's red light district.
The holder of UCL’s Chair in Dutch History also (co-)convenes the Low Countries History Seminar at the Institute for Historical Research, part of the University of London’s School of Advanced Study. Here scholars and students from across southern England gather to present and hear the findings of recent research. Scholars from The Netherlands and Belgium are regular participants.